I was twenty-five when Mamaw told me it was time to start using cold cream.
I took it as a personal attack.
She was the sweetest woman alive. That’s how committed I was to not hearing it.
Not because she was wrong or unkind. Twenty-five just doesn’t want to hear about aging. Twenty-five doesn’t want to think about time quietly carving its initials on your face.
So I ignored her.
I was hardheaded then. Who am I kidding? I’m still hardheaded. But I’ve lived long enough to know what that stubbornness costs.
Cold cream has been around longer than most countries. Galen was making a version of it in the second century using beeswax, olive oil, and rose water, and the basic idea hasn’t changed much since. The purpose never did either: take the day off your skin and give something good back.
By the time it reached the South, it felt like it had been here forever.
Pond’s was everywhere. So was Noxzema, with that sharp menthol sting that could clear your sinuses from three rooms away. Women bought it the same way they bought flour or laundry powder.
Mamaw kept hers right beside her perfume and compact—always the white jar with the green lid.
Every single night, she’d stand at the bathroom sink, work the cream into her skin with slow, patient circles, wipe it away with a tissue, and head to bed. No fancy steps. No twelve-product routine. Just something simple and steady.
Her hands always smelled faintly of roses and cold cream, and her skin stayed soft in that particular way I associate with Southern grandmothers—the kind of softness that comes from decades of small, consistent care.
She wasn’t following influencers. She wasn’t chasing trends. She was doing what her mother had done, and what her mother had learned before her.
That’s how wisdom travels around here: across kitchen tables, front porches, and bathroom counters.
One woman quietly handing something useful to the next.
When Mamaw told me it was time, that’s exactly what she was doing—trying to hand me something.
And I handed it right back.
I didn’t want to admit time was moving. I definitely didn’t want to admit it might already be showing up on my face. That felt like a problem for some future version of me.
She showed up sooner than I expected.
I didn’t get serious about skincare until my late thirties. While other women were already loyal to sunscreen and serums, I was still washing my face with bar soap and calling it good enough.
Then one day I caught myself in the mirror under unforgiving light, and the mirror got honest.
These days, my cabinet looks like a mad scientist’s experiment—Retin-A every other night, a handful of serums, Bioderma cleanser, La Roche-Posay moisturizer, and whatever new product Good Molecules has sent me lately.
It’s a lot.
But after years of doing almost nothing, it feels like I’m finally making up for lost time.
What about the cold cream? It never went anywhere.
Walk into any Dollar General in rural North Carolina—the kind sitting between a little white church and a tobacco field—and you’ll still find Pond’s on the shelf, year after year.
There are still women buying it because their mamas and grandmamas taught them: take your makeup off before bed and put something good on your skin.
Simple.
Practical.
It still works.
Every now and then, I reach for that white jar with the green lid. Not because it’s the most advanced thing I own, but because it brings Mamaw back into the room.
I smooth it on with the same slow circles I watched her use, wipe it away with a tissue, and for a second I’m standing barefoot on her cool linoleum again. I can almost see her there at the sink, Charlie perfume lingering in the air, a tissue pulled from the box beside her powder compact as she worked the cream into her skin the way she’d done thousands of times before.
Back then, I thought she was talking about skincare.
Now I think she was talking about taking care of yourself.
SMH. I should have listened at twenty-five — I should have said thank you.
I can’t go back and do that now.
But I can keep a jar of Pond’s in my house.
And I do.
Some wisdom doesn’t need improving.
It just needs remembering.
